Sunday, February 3, 2008

Tales from the Longbox

A little over a year ago I went about the arduous task of pairing down my comic collection. I wouldn't say it was "vast", but it did consist of about fifteen long boxes, roughly five thousand comic books. I can't understate the impact comic books have had on my life, I know that sounds dramatic, but they were my first forms of introduction to the world of literature, and yeah, I consider comics solidly as forms of literature. The only dry spell in reading and collecting comics in my life has been over the last few years, otherwise, I've always been meddling in them in one extent or another. This post will serve as a marker to my 'rejuvenation' project; getting the comics I decided to keep back in shape. I'm now down to four, maybe five long boxes, and they are all titles I decided to keep for one reason or another. I must stress, money, was not a factor in keeping titles, it was all about specific details key to each title. More often than not, it's just a "wow, this one is really cool" factor. As time (and money) permits, I'll catalogue titles, sort them by title and series, and put new bags and backs on them all. When it's all said and done, my collection will be somewhat static, but will be as pristine as it gets.

I was buying titles as far back as the late 70's, so my collection has got quite the eclectic mix spanning the last thirty years or so. I guess my collecting was at its peak in the late 80's and early 90's, so a large stack of keepers hail from then. Above is a smattering of titles from the middle of one of my boxes, I will have some gaps I'll need to fill over time as well. I might get things done faster if I didn't read them cover to cover every time I opened a new one up, heh.

Here's kind of a 'finished product' of what everything will look like. The first two long boxes are done; alphabetized, cataloged, organized, and slipped into new bags and boards. This took a lot longer than I thought it would, and buying new supplies from scratch is a bit slow going. I need to pick up a label maker and get some book titles on those file dividers too. As crazy as it sounds, what I'll do when I get everything in ship-shape, is post little blurbs (reviews, what-not) of each title, in order, of all the boxes. Daunting? Sure, but it'll be fun to do nonetheless!

2 comments:

I've had an ongoing project like this for the past 10 years. The reason why it has taken so long is that I keep buying, reading, bagging, and boarding and never take the time to make less work for myself.

Well, I'm not buying anything new, that's one plus I guess (except I'm missing out on a lot of new titles), but I do tend to read all the old ones every time I go to put it in a new bag. Ten years though? Sheesh, I don't have that kind of time!